Chapter 79: Dinner and Other Arrangements
The next morning. The gym, third floor.
Susan came in wearing actual workout clothes for once, which Andrew noted without commenting on. She looked lighter than she had in weeks — the specific lightness of someone who had finished a difficult conversation and come out the other side of it.
"Morning," Andrew said, not stopping his pull-ups.
"Morning." She sat on the bench near the wall and watched him finish the set. "I wanted to say thank you. For what you said. About telling Ross directly."
Andrew dropped down and grabbed his towel. "How did it go?"
"Better than I expected." She smoothed her ponytail. "He's — he handled it well. Better than he had any obligation to." She paused. "He's a good person."
Andrew looked at her sideways.
"What?" Susan said.
"Nothing. He is a good person."
"I'm allowed to say that."
"I didn't say you weren't."
She gave him the look she gave people when she suspected they were thinking something they weren't saying, which was accurate but not something he was going to confirm. He picked up his water bottle and let the moment pass.
"Carol and I want to have you over for lunch tomorrow," Susan said. "Noon, if you're free. Consider it a thank you."
"You don't have to do that."
"We want to." She stood up, which given that she'd been sitting for approximately four minutes suggested she had no actual workout plans for the morning. "Noon. I'll text you the address."
"You haven't done a single rep," Andrew said.
Susan smiled. "I'm eating for two reasons now." She picked up her bag. "Noon tomorrow. Don't be late."
She left.
Andrew watched her go, turned back to the pull-up bar, and thought about the specific category of person who came to the gym to deliver a message and then left, and whether that was admirable or infuriating. He decided it was both and went back to work.
The new boxing coach arrived at nine.
Bolton had arranged the introduction before his own situation had gotten complicated — a former amateur fighter named Greg who worked the morning slot at the gym and had the patient, precise manner of someone who had learned that good coaching was mostly about asking the right questions rather than delivering the right answers.
They sparred two rounds.
Greg went down at the end of the second round with the specific expression of someone who had been told something was going to happen and had not fully believed it until it happened.
He lay on the canvas for a moment, staring at the lights.
"You've been training for how long?" he said.
"About nine months seriously," Andrew said.
Greg nodded slowly, in the way of someone filing information. "Okay," he said. "Okay, so we're going to need to think about what I'm actually offering you here."
It was an honest assessment, and Andrew respected it.
[Boxing (Proficient): 97/100]
Still three points. The panel had not moved, and Greg's assessment was accurate — controlled gym sparring wasn't the answer. Red Hook was still the answer. Thursday was still Thursday.
He finished the session, showered, changed, and was out of the gym by ten-thirty.
He'd been studying for the SAT for four months.
It had started in January, quietly — an hour a day carved out of whatever the schedule allowed, sometimes at the library on Amsterdam, sometimes at the kitchen table after Christie had gone to bed. The College Board had no age restrictions in this world, which made his situation straightforward: pay the registration fee, show up, take the exam.
He'd scheduled it for next month. A trial run, more than anything — a way to assess where he actually stood before committing to a specific school target.
The reason for college was practical. Evan's fund had a condition attached: Andrew could access the full principal upon completing a four-year degree within a five-year window. The monthly disbursement was manageable. The lump sum, when it cleared, would be the difference between the food truck being his ceiling and the food truck being his foundation.
Community college was the obvious path — faster, cheaper, less competitive to enter. Andrew had no interest in the obvious path. He wanted the campus, the full four years, the version of the experience he'd missed in his previous life by going straight from school into an office and staying there for two decades.
He could afford it now, or close to it. Between the truck income and the monthly disbursement, tuition was within reach if he planned carefully. Kessler had confirmed the math.
He took the subway to the 72nd Street library branch, found a table near the windows, and spread out his practice materials.
The afternoon passed the way good study afternoons passed — faster than expected, with the specific satisfaction of watching things that had been confusing become slightly less confusing.
[Test-Taking Skills (Proficient): 13/100]
The panel had produced this skill sometime in February, which Andrew had found both logical and mildly absurd. It didn't track English or Math separately — it tracked the meta-skill of taking tests, the specific knowledge of how to read a question, where the traps were, how to allocate time across sections. It had been at Beginner for six weeks before crossing into Proficient, and crossing that threshold had come with a noticeable improvement in his practice scores — not because he knew more, but because he wasted less.
He worked through two full practice tests, checked his answers, circled his errors, and noted the knowledge gaps in a separate notebook. He'd look at those tomorrow. It was nearly six, and he needed to get home, make dinner, and do the truck prep for tomorrow's service.
He was packing up when the woman at the next table spoke.
"Sorry — are you also studying for the SAT?"
He'd registered her peripherally over the past two hours — blonde, mid-twenties, organized in the way of someone who had a system and used it. She'd been working steadily through her own materials, which he'd clocked as prep books similar to his own.
"Yeah," he said.
"Same." She extended her hand. "Laura. I'm taking it next month."
"Andrew. Same."
She was wearing leather gloves, which was mildly unusual for an indoor library in April, but New York was full of people with their own specific habits and he'd long since stopped treating the unusual as remarkable.
"It's a little strange, isn't it?" she said. "Studying for a test that's usually for seventeen-year-olds."
"Slightly," Andrew agreed.
"I went straight into work out of high school," she said. "Now I want to go back. The no-age-restriction thing is relatively new — I almost didn't believe it when I found out."
"Same situation," Andrew said, which was close enough to true.
He picked up his bag. "Good luck next month."
"You too." She smiled — easy, straightforward, the smile of someone who meant exactly what they said and nothing more complicated. "Maybe I'll see you at the test center."
"Maybe," Andrew said, and headed for the exit.
He made pasta for dinner — the quick kind, twenty minutes, olive oil and garlic and whatever fresh herbs were left in the refrigerator. He ate standing at the counter going through his truck prep list for tomorrow, which had become his standard dinner configuration on busy weeknights.
[Cooking (Expert): 8/100]
Unchanged. His own quick dinners didn't move it. He needed the service environment, the real feedback, the specific pressure of volume and expectation. Tomorrow would help.
He did the prep, checked the cooler, reviewed the Tuesday menu, and was in bed by ten.
Before he slept he thought about Red Hook on Thursday, and Bolton, and the three points sitting between him and Mastery like a wall that had been politely waiting for him to climb it.
Thursday, he thought.
He went to sleep.
The next day. Noon.
Carol and Susan's apartment was on the Upper West Side — a two-bedroom in a building that had the particular quality of places that had been well-maintained for long enough to look permanent. Andrew had been given the address by text and arrived exactly on time, which Susan had specified and which he'd taken seriously.
Carol answered the door.
He'd met her at the gym, briefly, and had formed an impression that was now being revised in a domestic setting. She was warm in a way that was genuine rather than performed — the warmth of someone who had arrived at a good place in their life and was comfortable in it. She also looked slightly tired, which made sense given what her body was currently doing.
"Andrew. Come in." She stepped back. "Susan's in the kitchen arguing with the stove."
"I'm not arguing with it," Susan called from the kitchen. "I'm reasoning with it."
"The reasoning isn't working," Carol said.
Andrew came in, set down the bottle of wine he'd brought — a decent Burgundy, because showing up empty-handed was a habit he'd broken — and went to the kitchen doorway.
Susan had a pan on the burner and an expression of focused disagreement.
"What's happening?" Andrew said.
"The left burner runs hot," Susan said. "I've been accounting for it for two months and I'm still overcorrecting."
"Move the pan two inches to the right," Andrew said. "Off the center of the element. The heat distribution on gas burners isn't uniform — if it's running hot on that side, you're getting more from the left edge than the center."
Susan looked at the pan. Moved it two inches to the right.
A pause.
"Huh," she said.
"Give it a minute," Andrew said.
He went back to the living room. Carol had set the table with the specific care of someone who had been planning this meal and wanted it to go well — good plates, a centerpiece that was simple rather than elaborate, the table set for three.
"How are you feeling?" Andrew said.
Carol sat down across from him. "Tired. Hungry all the time. A little unreal." She said it with the equanimity of someone who had processed the information and was now living inside it. "Good, mostly. Really good, actually."
"Good," Andrew said.
"Ross called me yesterday," she said. "He seemed — lighter than I expected. I thought this was going to be harder for him."
"He made a decision he actually wanted to make," Andrew said. "That helps."
Carol looked at him for a moment with an expression he'd seen from Susan — the recalibration look, the one that revised its model slightly upward.
"Susan said you were the one who told her to talk to him directly," Carol said.
"She would have figured it out."
"Maybe. But she didn't until you said it." Carol folded her hands on the table. "So. Thank you."
"You're welcome," Andrew said, simply.
Susan came out of the kitchen with two plates and the look of someone who had won an argument with a gas burner.
"The risotto is correct," she announced.
It was, in fact, very good risotto — Susan had been paying attention at the truck, clearly, and had applied what she'd absorbed with the specific precision she brought to everything physical. Andrew ate it and told her so honestly, which made her look pleased in the way people looked pleased when they'd cooked for someone who actually knew what they were eating.
They talked through lunch — about Ben, about the logistics of the next several months, about the Upper West Side building's notoriously complicated laundry room situation, which turned out to be one of those New York topics that could sustain thirty minutes of conversation without effort.
Andrew walked home through the afternoon feeling the particular contentment of a meal eaten with people who were glad to have you there.
[Observation (Proficient): 73/100]
The panel moved, which meant he'd been paying attention to something worth paying attention to.
He wasn't sure what, exactly. But he filed it and kept walking.
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